To call your attention to interesting photography related on the web... and to show off some of my photographic work... is there another reason for a blog?

Sunday, December 26, 2010

Last lab in the world that processes Kodachrome to close on Dec 31

'Last Kodachrome' end of an era http://ow.ly/3utxK last lab in the world that processes Kodachrome to close on Dec 31 #film #photography

[excerpt]

The photography show is called "The Last Kodachrome" but the last Kodachrome images aren't in the show. They are still in Pat Willard's Nikon camera.

They will have to come out by next week because the last lab in the world that processes the famed color film, Dwayne's Photo in Parsons, Kan., is discontinuing it at the end of the year. The last rolls to be processed must be there by noon, Dec. 30. After 75 years, all that will be left of Kodachrome is the Paul Simon song, and a state park named after it in Utah.

There will still be a sister film called Ektachrome, but Willard, a fine art photographer in Redwood City, is not buying it.

"I'll probably do only black and white," he says, lowering his tone to a funereal whisper. "There's no color like Kodachrome."

When the Eastman Kodak Co announced that the last rolls were hitting the shelves, in June 2009, Willard bought 40 rolls, at $8 apiece, and stuck them in the fridge of his townhouse in Redwood Shores. Then he contacted Ann Jastrab, director of Rayko Gallery, proposing a juried exhibition for Kodachrome prints.

Fifty photographers nationwide, plus a few from Canada, northern Europe and South Africa, sent in portfolios. Twenty-one photographers were selected and 45 prints are in the show, which opened Dec. 17 and, after a Christmas break, will reopen Jan. 4. Included are four prints of Willard's abstract expressionist work.